Lavern Faddis

Lavern Faddis, 93, passed away on Monday, December 4, 2023, in Tulsa, Oklahoma. She was born on August 22, 1930, in Qualls, Cherokee County, Oklahoma to Joseph Milton Faddis and Junie Marksberry Faddis. She was the seventh of eight children. She was preceded in death by her parents and all of her siblings, Elsie, Nettie, Haskell, Ernest, Lee, B.D., and Joe Mac.

Lavern attended Qualls Schools and was a graduate of Tahlequah Central High School class of 1948.

She married Gene Vanderpool in 1948 and together had three sons. She is survived by her sons Mike Vanderpool, Terry Vanderpool and David Vanderpool, seven grandchildren (Priscilla, Casey, Cindy, Jared, Leah, John and Adam), fifteen great-grandchildren, many nieces and nephews and friends.

Lavern was a Christian and lived her life for God. Her beliefs were firm and she took every opportunity to speak of them and be a living testimony for Jesus.

She was a homemaker most of her life but did work outside the home occasionally. She worked at Saint Francis Hospital and Tulsa Public Schools. Later she worked in a Christian bookstore in Owasso and volunteered at Claremore Regional Hospital. She enjoyed those jobs and and liked talking about what she did and the people she worked with.

They raised their sons in Tulsa first renting an apartment in west Tulsa then on East 1st Street. Their first owned home was a small two-bedroom house at 7148 East Ute Street near the Tulsa airport. Later they lived at 5924 East Latimer Street and at 5930 East 25th Street.

Lavern lived at Baptist Village in Owasso, Oklahoma at her passing where she made many close friends. The final month of her life was spent at Porta Caeli Hospice House in Tulsa where she received excellent loving care from Porta Caeli staff as well as Good Shepherd Hospice Nurse Angela, Chaplain Carrie, Aide Katelyne and Social Worker Gigi.

On her high school diploma she wrote as her motto: The secret of success is the constancy of purpose.

Anyone who knew her well knows she would often reach back to "the old days" when she was young, growing up in the country, on the farm. She would tell you how things were done then and how the family got by. As she would say they were poor but never hungry. God and hard work provided for their needs.

She realized that that way of life was gone and wanted to somehow leave a record of that life to her sons, grandchildren and future offspring. So, in 2004, she started a book about it.

She wrote her story from the point of view of a sewing machine, the old Singer treadle sewing machine that belonged to her mother. That is the sewing machine that came to Oklahoma from Arkansas in a horse-drawn wagon that her mother used to make their clothes. That was the sewing machine that was always there in her parents home that was seemingly in near constant use. Her thought, in 2004, was, "if the sewing machine could talk..."

So she wrote her story, "100 Years Of Stitches" and gave her sons and wives and grandchildren and neices, nephews and friends a written account of her life on the farm and how things were done in the old days. Many of her friends and family have copies of that book.

And, in dedicating her story, she left a little insight into her own heart. She wrote: "To Mom and Dad: All I am or hope to be, I owe to the simple things you taught me."

And the sewing machine? It's still around, still observing and still sewing but just for fun now and not necessity.